Two issues typically complicate the process of decoding audio and video streams and allowing them to play with perfect synchronization. This chapter covers the process of realigning the audio and video streams at the receiver to achieve perfect lip synchronization.

Chapter 3, "Fundamentals of Video Compression," went into detail about how audio and video streams are encoded and decoded in a video conferencing system. However, the last processing step in the end-to-end chain involves ensuring that the decoded audio and video streams play with perfect synchronization. This chapter focuses on audio and video; however, video conferencing systems can synchronize any type of media to any other type of media, including sequences of still images or 3D animation. Two issues complicate the process of achieving synchronization:

Video conferencing systems also typically have separate processing pipelines for audio and video within the sender and receiver endpoints.

This chapter covers the process of realigning those streams at the receiver.

Understanding Lip Sync Skew

Lip sync is the general term for audio/video synchronization, and literally refers to the fact that visual lip movements of a speaker must match the sound of the spoken words. If the video and audio displayed at the receiving endpoint are not in sync, the misalignment between audio and video is referred to as skew. Without a mechanism to ensure lip sync, audio often plays ahead of video, because the latencies involved in processing and sending video frames are greater than the latencies for audio.

Human Perceptions

User-perceived objection to unsynchronized media streams varies with the amount of skew—for instance, a misalignment of audio and video of less than 20 milliseconds (ms) is considered imperceptible. As the skew approaches 50 ms, some viewers will begin to notice the audio/video mismatch but will be unable to determine whether video is leading or lagging audio. As the skew increases, viewers detect that video and audio are out of sync and can also determine whether video is leading or lagging audio. At this point, the video/audio offset distracts users from the video conference. When the skew approaches one second, the video signal provides no benefit—viewers will ignore the video and focus on the audio.

Human sensitivity to skew differs greatly from person to person. For the same audio/video skew, one person might be able to detect that one stream is clearly leading another stream, whereas another person might not be able to detect any skew at all.

A research paper published by the IEEE reveals that most viewers are more sensitive to audio/video misalignment when audio plays before the corresponding video, because hearing the spoken word before seeing the lips move is more "unnatural" to a viewer (Blakowski and Steinmetz 1996).

Sensitivity to skew is also determined by the frame rate and resolution: Viewers are more sensitive to skew when watching higher video resolution or higher frame rate.

Report IS-191 issued by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) recommends guidelines for maximum skew tolerances for broadcast systems to achieve acceptable quality. The guidelines model the end-to-end path by assuming that a single encoder at the distribution center receives both audio and video streams, digitizes the streams, assigns time stamps, encodes the streams, and then sends the encoded data over a network to a receiver. The guidelines specify that on the sending side, at the input to the encoder, the audio should not lead the video by more than 15 ms and should not lag the video by more than 45 ms. This possible lead or lag might arise from uncertainty in the latencies through the digitizing/capture hardware and occurs before the encoder assigns time stamps to the digitized media streams.

At the receiving side, the receiver plays the audio and video streams according to time stamps assigned by the encoder. But again, there is an uncertainty in the latency of each stream through the playout hardware. The guidelines stipulate that for each stream, this uncertainty should not exceed ±15 ms; this tolerance is an absolute tolerance that applies to each stream. Based on these guidelines, two requirements emerge for acceptable lip sync tolerance:

Criterion for leading audio—In the worst-case-permitted scenario, audio leads video at the input to the encoder by 15 ms. The receiver plays the audio stream too far ahead by 15 ms while playing the video stream too far behind by 15 ms. As a result, the maximum amount by which audio may lead video at the presentation device of the receiver is 15 ms + 15 ms + 15 ms = 45 ms.

Criterion for lagging audio—In the worst-case-permitted scenario, audio lags video at the input to the encoder by 45 ms. The receiver plays the audio stream too far behind by 15 ms while playing the video stream too far ahead by 15 ms. As a result, the maximum amount by which audio may lag video at the presentation device of the receiver is 45 ms + 15 ms + 15 ms = 75 ms.

NOTE

When designing a video conferencing product, you will find it beneficial to find a "skew test person" who is highly sensitive to audio/video misalignment, to provide the worst-case subjective opinion on skew tolerance.

Measuring Skew

Audio/video skew is measured on the output device at presentation time. The output device is also called the presentation device. The definition of presentation time depends on the output device:

For video displays, the presentation time of a frame in a video sequence is the moment that the image flashes on the screen.

For audio devices, the presentation time for a sample of audio is the moment that the endpoint speakers emit the audio sample.

The presentation times of the audio and video streams on the output devices must match the capture times at the input devices. These input devices (camera, microphone) are also called capture devices. The method of determining the capture time depends on the media:

For a video camera, the capture time for a video frame is the moment that the charge-coupled device (CCD) in the camera captures the image.

For a microphone, the capture time for a sample of audio is the moment that the microphone transducer records the sample.

For each type of media, the entire path from capture device on the sender to presentation device on the receiver is called the end-to-end path.

A lip sync mechanism must ensure that the skew at the presentation device on the receiver is as close as possible to zero. In other words, the relationship between audio and video at presentation time, on the presentation device, must match the relationship between audio and video at capture time, on the capture device, even in the presence of numerous delays in the entire end-to-end path, which might differ between video and audio.

Figure 7-1 provides another way of looking at media synchronization. This diagram shows the timing of multiple streams playing out the presentation devices of a receiver, without synchronization.

Each stream could be a video or audio stream. The gray marker in each stream corresponds to the same time at the sender, referenced to a clock on the sender that is common to all inputs. This common reference clock is also referred to as a common reference timebase. For these streams to play in a synchronized manner, the gray markers must line up; that is, the samples at the gray markers must emerge from the playout devices simultaneously. The goal is to add delay to the streams that play "too early" (streams 1, 2, and 4) so that they play in sync with stream 3, which is the stream that arrives "too late."

Delay Accumulation

Skew between audio and video might accumulate over time for either the video or audio path. Each stage of the video conferencing path injects delay, and these delays fall under three main categories:

Delays at the transmitter—The capture, encoding, and packetization delay of the endpoint hardware devices

Delays in the network—The network delay, including gateways and transcoders

Delays at the receiver—The input buffer delay, the decoder delay, and the playout delay on the endpoint hardware devices

However, most of these delays are unknown and difficult to measure and change over time. This means that the mechanism for achieving lip sync should not attempt to measure and account for each individual delay in the end-to-end media path. Instead, the mechanism must work in the presence of variable, unknown path delays.

Most video conferencing equipment transmits audio and video over a network using RTP, which multiplexes audio and video into separate network streams. This method is in contrast to the format for DVDs, which multiplex the audio and video streams into a single stream called an MPEG2 program stream. Because the audio and video streams of a video conference remain separated through the network from endpoint to endpoint, each stream might experience different network delays.

Figure 7-2 shows how differing delays in the end-to-end audio and video paths can accumulate over time, causing the skew between audio and video to increase at each stage of the media path.

The first graph at the upper left shows the original relationship between video and audio. The graph represents audio as a sequence of packets forming a continuous stream. Each audio packet spans a duration of time corresponding to the audio data it contains. In contrast, the graph represents video as a sequence of frames, where each frame exists for a single instant of time. The figure shows a scenario in which the skew between audio and video increases at three stages of the end-to-end path from sender to receiver: after the sender-side delays, after the network delays, and after the receiver-side delays. To understand how delays creep into each stage, it is necessary to look at how each stage processes data, starting with the network path.

Delays in the Network Path

A lip sync solution must work in the presence of many delays in the end-to-end path, both in the endpoints themselves and in the network. Figure 7-3 shows the sources of delay in the network between the sender and the receiver. The network-related elements consist of routers, switches, and the WAN.

The network also hosts other elements that may process media streams: conference bridges, transraters, and transcoders. These devices might add considerable delay to one or both streams and might cause the network delay for one stream to be significantly greater than the network delay for the other stream.

Bridges combine video/audio streams from multiple endpoints to facilitate a multipoint conference. The process of mixing or combining streams imposes an end-to-end delay.

Transraters re-encode a video stream into a lower bit rate to send the bitstream through a lower-bandwidth network or to a lower-bandwidth endpoint. Transraters typically apply only to video streams.

Transcoders may exist in the network to change the codec type and may apply to either audio or video streams. Figure 7-3 shows a transcoder that translates from G.711 to G.728. A video conferencing network configuration might require transcoders for two reasons:

To reduce the bit rate—Figure 7-3 shows a scenario in which an audio transcoder converts a high-bandwidth audio stream into a low-bandwidth stream. In this case, the high-bandwidth G.711 stream arrives at the transcoder on a high-bandwidth LAN, and the bridge must transcode the audio stream into a lower-bandwidth G.728 version suitable for a low-bandwidth WAN. When a bridge uses a transcoder for the sole purpose of changing the bit rate, it is still called a transcoder, even if the end effect is that of a transrater.

To bridge two endpoints with different codec capabilities—One example for audio is the process of converting from an H.320-centric G.729 codec to an H.323-centric G.723 codec. An example for video is the process of converting from an H.323-centric H.263 codec to an H.320-centric H.261 codec.

Delays for audio and video on some segments of the network might differ due to different quality of service (QoS) levels. Figure 7-3 shows a router configured with QoS to provide lower latency for audio than for video. This difference in quality might be continuous or might arise only when the router suffers heavier-than-normal network congestion.

The congestion level of routers might cause the delays for either audio or video to fluctuate over time. In the figure, router X temporarily experiences a heavy load at time T, causing it to momentarily increase the delay of packets through its queue.

In addition to these short-term events, the long-term, steady-state network path taken by either stream might abruptly change as a result of a change in the dynamic IP routing. Any change in IP routing results in new steady-state end-to-end delays.